Guest Post & Giveaway: Brush With Catastrophe by Tara Lain

Apr 18, 2017

This is the tale of a crappy witch who's faced with saving the world -- and the amazing man and the phenomenal cat that set out to help him do it.

So happy to have Tara Lain with us today!

Hi everyone! I’m delighted to be here! Today I’m celebrating the rerelease of Brush with Catastrophe, a paranormal, contemporary, gay romance about witches! In the book, my hero, Sammy Raphael, is a young college student who is a talented painter. And his painting also represents his main supernatural talent. He’s a prophetic painter. He paints things that are certain to come true. Sadly, he doesn’t think of his talent as very cool because most of what he paints turns out to be inconsequential. Until he paints this gorgeous guy… ah, but then you’ll have to read the story!

I love art and I love to paint. I only discovered a few years ago that I had some talent for it, but sadly there aren’t enough hours in the day to be a good writer and a good painter. Since I started painting so late ,I knew I could never really excel at it. Writing, on the other hand, has been my life. So I chose writing, but I still get some of my desire to create visual art out in mixed media collage -- and in writing the occasional painter as a hero.

Artists make great heroes I think. By nature, they‘re intuitive and in touch with their instinctive and emotional sides. These make for interesting characters. In Outing the Quarterback, I got to create a jock hero who secretly longs to be a painter and falls in love with another painter. I got to show the angst of my hero trying to suppress his artistic nature in sports and business. I created a very popular artist hero in Fire Balls. The hero, Rodney Mansfield, paints nude portraits of men which make’s for lots of fun interactions in his studio. Later in the Balls to the Wall series, I introduce the McMillan twins who are also artists. I’m currently writing their book called Bleu Balls and I get to show how their different natures are reflected in their art. My hero in Brush with Catastrophe takes the intuitive process of painting to a whole new level, which I hope you’ll find both fun and challenging as an idea. In this book, I give reality to the concept that art can change the world!

Brush With Catastrophe

(The Aloysius Tales Series, #2)

By Tara Lain

Blurb:

Sammy Raphael is a crappy witch, and on top of that, he can't seem to get a boyfriend. Where other supernaturals can bring down lightning and manifest wealth, Sammy can paint. Granted, the “prophetic” paintings he creates at night always come true, but they never predict anything important. Sammy feels like a total loser with a worthless ability.

One night he paints a gorgeous guy who turns out to be his secret crush, the human Ryder, but Ryder’s changed so much he's almost unrecognizably beautiful. Then Sammy paints an angel who turns out to be a witch. But is that witch also a devil—a devil who can bring down Sammy’s whole community and everyone he loves? And why the hell does Ryder keep changing? Aloysius, the black cat familiar, always backs a winner. So why is he backing Sammy?

Sammy looked down into the soup.
“That’s the only kind of guy who would ever be interested in me. A cheating
rat.”

“Sam, that’s not so.”

His voice shook. “Why the hell do
you think he even bothered with me to begin with? What would he want with a
stupid loser if he was planning on cheating with half the fucking college?” The
tears squeezed out and started to drip down his cheeks.

Ryder put the tray on the dresser
and wrapped Sammy in his arms. “You’re not a loser at all. You’re one of the
finest people I’ve ever known. You’re kind and funny and so smart. You paint
like a master. Even if you do pick strange subject matter sometimes.” Ryder
chuckled and nodded toward the painting on Sammy’s easel.

“You saw that?” Sammy snuffled.
Maybe if he didn’t move too much Ryder would forget to let him go.

“Hard to miss that painting in a
room the size of most closets.”

Pretty embarrassing. But compared
to having had your energy drained by a cheating pig and your neck chained by
the selfsame bastard while you were blacked out, painting a picture was small
potatoes in the shame department.

“Ready to sleep?”

No. “Yeah.” Sammy pulled the pillows out from behind him and lay
back down. Al crawled up next to him. His eyelids felt weighted. “Thank you so
much for taking care of me. I’ll rest tomorrow, and I should be able to go to
school on Monday.”

“Yes, you’ll rest tomorrow, and
I’ll see that you do. I’m not going anywhere. I want to make sure that asshole
doesn’t come back. I’ll sleep on your couch and be here to take care of you in
the morning.”

Sammy shook his head. “No way a
human can sleep on that couch. Aloysius won’t even do it. It has lumps the size
of Everest. I’ll be fine. Really.”

“Not leaving, so forget about it.”

Sweeter words were never spoken. I don’t want to be alone. He opened his
eyes a slit. Ryder gazed down at him. That expression. He remembered it—from
the painting. His deep eyes. So soft. So much like love.

A thick fog of exhaustion rolled
over Sam, and his eyes wouldn’t stay open. “Sleep in the bed with me and Al. We
don’t move much. Sleep here… prommmmissse….”

Tara Lain writes the Beautiful Boys of Romance in LGBT erotic romance novels that star her unique, charismatic heroes. Her first novel was published in January of 2011 and she’s now somewhere around book 32. Her best-selling novels have garnered awards for Best Series, Best Contemporary Romance, Best Paranormal Romance, Best Ménage, Best LGBT Romance, Best Gay Characters, and Tara has been named Best Writer of the Year in the LRC Awards. In her other job, Tara owns an advertising and public relations firm. She often does workshops on both author promotion and writing craft. She lives with her soul-mate husband and her soul-mate dog near the sea in California where she sets a lot of her books. Passionate about diversity, justice, and new experiences, Tara says on her tombstone it will say “Yes”!